There was no primal scream, no exaggerated raised fist, and very little outward emotion from the Dodgers‘The newest launcher.
Instead, at the decisive moment of an auspicious debut for the team Jack Flaherty On Saturday night at the Oakland Coliseum, the veteran pitcher simply slapped his glove, chewed a piece of gum and walked back into his new team’s dugout with a confident nod.
In the Dodgers’ 10-0 victory over the Oakland Athletics, Flaherty delivered everything the team had been hoping for when… He acquired it in a blockbuster trade on the last day of the deadline. with the Detroit Tigers on Tuesday.
He pitched six scoreless innings, leading the way in what was just the Dodgers’ third win in their last nine games.
He racked up seven strikeouts and 16 missed swings, displaying the kind of premium stuff they hope will bolster a starting rotation battling injuries and looking for top-notch pitching.
Most of all, with the game on the line in a bases-loaded, no-out bind in the bottom of the sixth, the Dodgers put their trust in Flaherty.
Then they saw him accept the pressure.
Over a nine-pitch sequence, the right-hander induced a fielder’s choice groundout, a missed-swinging strikeout and an inning-ending double-hop up the middle, giving the Dodgers a tantalizing taste of his resurgent 2024 season — in which he’s now 8-5 with a 2.80 ERA — and a much-needed, high-leverage, skate-breaking sigh of relief.
When the Dodgers landed Flaherty as the centerpiece of their trade deadline haul on Tuesday (acquiring what many believed to be the best pitcher dealt in this year’s trade market), they immediately saddled the veteran right-hander with heavy expectations for the end of the season.
The Dodgers needed Flaherty to be a frontline pitcher and solidify a rotation shaky due to key absences (including Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Walker Buehler) and the recent poor results (epitome of the failures of Clayton Kershaw and Gavin’s Stone earlier this week).
They needed the 28-year-old to be an October weapon, the kind they’d lacked too often in recent postseason failures.
And from the start, they also needed a strong team debut from the Harvard-Westlake product, hoping Flaherty could halt a recent 2-6 skid that had eroded the Dodgers’ once-comfortable lead in the National League West.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Jack take the ball,” manager Dave Roberts said Friday night on the eve of Flaherty’s first start with the Dodgers, “and be a defender for us.”
In his six-inning, seven-strikeout, 99-pitch outing, Flaherty proved to be just that, if not a little more.
With a 93 mph fastball and a devastating duo of sliders and curveballs, the Los Angeles native breezed through his first game with his hometown team. He worked through a pair of soft singles in the first inning, retiring the side with back-to-back strikeouts. He sat down 12 of 13 batters between the second and fifth innings, with the only hit coming on a line drive that bounced off his lower right leg (after a quick check by the trainer, Flaherty remained in the game).
The sixth-inning jam wasn’t his fault, either, with Cavan Biggio committing a throwing error and JJ Bleday dropping a single to left field before a walk to Brent Rooker loaded the bases with no outs.
By that point, Flaherty had thrown 90 pitches. The Dodgers’ lead was just 2-0. And left-hander Alex Vesia was warming up in the bullpen.
Roberts, however, remained in the dugout. Three batters later, his faith in Flaherty was rewarded.
Read more: Plaschke: Jack Flaherty gives Dodgers dramatic win at trade deadline
Saturday marked a day of change for the Dodgers, and not just because they increased their division lead (from four to 4½ games) for the first time in nearly a week.
Roberts shuffled his lineup before the game, moving the slumping Will Smith and steady Teoscar Hernandez into the No. 2 and No. 4 spots in the batting order. The short-handed Dodgers offense also took advantage of several opportunities, getting a two-run single with two outs from Gavin Lux in the third inning before adding two insurance runs in the eighth and six more in the ninth.
But amid all that, Flaherty’s dominance was the most encouraging story of the night, providing the Dodgers with exactly what they needed amid their recent slump and an example of what they’ll want from him for the rest of the season.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.